Episode 71 - Simon Boegheim and Football Queensland History website

Download and listen to this episode here.

Back on the air after an unplanned week off. 

Also, don't be fooled by the brevity of the notes, the various sections have a bit more heft than Paul's truncated notes here indicate.

Some discussion about Paul's appearance (along with Roy Hay), on John Didulica's Football Belongs podcast series - especially on Paul's closing remarks from the episode, about what if any legacy one could glean from the Slavia vs VFL match from 1964.

Praise for Greg Stock and his liberating of Canberran soccer materials from various libraries. A little bit of a digression on Melbourne's Sporting Globe newspaper during the 1960s, and the problems of the soccer coverage there - which could be good, but is often missing matches that took place on Sundays, and thus is missing coverage of the leading team of the mid-1960s - South Melbourne, which played predominantly on Sundays.

This week's guest is Simon Boegheim from the Queensland Football History Project, to discuss the launch of the Football Queensland History website. Within this discussion we cover Simon's football history; how he got started in football history; the long trajectory to build (and maintain) the historical group; the assistance that tangible support from Queensland's soccer body (in the form of space provided for archives, and the website), and local council (professional scanning equipment); the importance of using social media to engage and maintain the interest of those interested in Queensland's soccer history; the particular spread out nature of Queensland, requiring the willingness to embrace soccer as it exists throughout Queensland, as well across both men's and women's soccer.

Finally, 100 Years Ago Today where we start with Buderim and preparations for the new season, and the pending harvest of crops; plans for a new club in Rockhampton, Rockhampton Celtic; in the Darling Downs, a new club to set up in Oakey; discussion of the leasing of the Exhibition Ground in Brisbane.

Episode 53 - Roy Hay on Harry Dockerty and Scots in soccer; Internet Archive

Download and listen to this episode here. 

On this week's episode we begin by acknowledging that George Cotsanis is still doing his interviews, and that Mark Boric's computer has apparently carked it. Paul also notes one of those rarer moments where uploading, saving, and hoarding copious amount of material actually pays off, via being able to provide a link to a podcast interview with Kate Cohen.

Paul talks about finding (and uploading) a stash of mid-2000s Green Gully videos - including a brief rundown of the existence of Trove's archived website search tool, which is analogous to Wayback Machine

Paul then follows up last week's look at the Wayback Machine, by giving a rundown of his early explorations with the Wayback Machine's parent project, the Internet Archive. Paul notes, among other things

• What the Internet Archive is, and how long it's been doing it for
• What kinds of things one can find on the Internet Archive, and what's clearly not there from an Australian soccer standpoint. 
• Contemplating its utility as both a back up and alternative to storing items on servers such as Google's.
• The advantages of uploading to Internet Archive over other services - including the automatic creation of multiple file formats for each item you upload, including text recognition files.
• The disadvantages of uploading to Internet Archive - especially the site's cumbersome search tool.
• A how to (which works much better if you can find the relevant video stream on Facebook) in terms of uploading - including the importance of breadth of subject/tags/labelling, as well as consistency; selecting "English" where appropriate, in order to enable text scanning; as well as a quick demonstration of the ability to fix or add to an item's metadata after the initial upload.

(Due to not being adequately prepared or suitably rehearsed, Paul forgets to mention the "collections" utility - maybe in a future episode)

Our guest this week is Australian soccer's best known and most prolific historian, Roy Hay. After discussing why it took 53 episodes to get him on to the show, we get into a very wide ranging discussion nominally on Victorian soccer player and administrator Harry Dockerty, but also onto other topics as is the wont of people who have known each other for many years. So, in the discussion

• Who was Harry Dockerty - where did he come from and how did he end up in Melbourne?
• What was he like as an administrator, and what kind of obstacles would he have faced as president of Victorian soccer from for the fifty years he was involved with the game?
• The changes in the soccer milieu he would have seen,
• The nature of Scottish immigration to Australia, especially within the context of soccer in Victoria, and the status of the Scots as an ethnic group in their own right.
• The Scots' influence on all codes (and leagues) of football in Victoria.
• The competition and trophy Dockerty established and had named after him, the Dockerty Cup.
• The matter of footballing continuities both social and personal, and for the Dockerty Cup itself.

Roy stays on for the final segment, 100 Years Ago Today, where we in Tasmania we find that the much anticipated North vs South game is a bit of a fizzer; we get a rundown once more on the hopes of getting financial help from the English FA; take a look at the Prenzlau vs Marburg match in Ipswich; check out the Melbourne results; and zip through the South Australian competition, with another hitherto unfamiliar trophy.

Episode 25 - Our favourite books; maps; Alec Barr and hit and run drivers

Download and listen to episode 25 here.

In this episode we look at Mark Boric digging out the history of the Scots-Australian soccer journalist from the 1950s-1980s, Alec Barr, and Barr's history as a player, journalist (and his bias against certain clubs, see also here), and convicted reckless driver, after he killed two journalists in a car accident.

We discuss the progress of Paul's Australian soccer cultural map, and especially the Brompton Speedway in South Australia, and Ted Rowley's relationship to that one-time soccer ground and later speedway.

Ian then pines for Joe Gorman, and Gorman's absence from Australian soccer writing.

The bulk of the episode is spent discussing a listener's suggestion about what Australian soccer history books we recommend. Ian couldn't keep himself to five, so he preempted his five choices for the radio by putting up a longlist before the show.

For the record Ian's five books mentioned on the show were:

• Soccer in New South Wales, 1880–1980, by Phil Mosely
• Soccer Anzacs: The Story of Caledonian Soccer Club, by John Williamson
• The Aboriginal Soccer Tribe: A History of Aboriginal Involvement with the World Game, by John Maynard (updated in 2019)
• A History of Football in Australia, by Roy Hay and Bill Murray
• The Death and Life of Australian Soccer, by Joe Gorman

Paul's selections were the following, with links to reviews by Paul where available:

• The Death and Life of Australian Soccer, by Joe Gorman
• Green Gully Soccer Club: 50 Years, by Peter Desira and Richard Curmi
• Offsider (later re-released as The Loneliness of the Long-distance Gunner)
• Keep It Simple, Stupid, by Peter Goldsworthy
• Captain Socceroo: the Paul Wade Story, by Paul Wade and Kyle Patterson

Another item to look at, though a little out of date now, is Roy Hay's Bibliography of Australian Soccer.

If you're wondering what happens at the end of the show, I get rudely interrupted by people in the control room outside bursting in with an unsolicited and frankly rude barrage of noise celebrating a Socceroos goal against Nepal.